Ἰλιάς
The Iliad and Dr Seuss have nothing to say to us today. “One fish, two fish”? Really. Recent translations of liner-A tablets reveal that it was a faceBOOK post that launched 1000 ships.
Figure 1: “Oracle headquarters, Delphi, Greece AUC MMDCCXLII” by George Jones is licenced under CC SA 4.0
I recently finished re-listening to the Iliad (20 hours) and was struck by how little has changed in 3000 years:
- The Olympian gods still enter directly into human battles.
- The Hittites still rule Anatolia (Turkey).
- Slavery is still a thing in the Mediterranean.
- Raiding and plundering coastal towns is a perfectly acceptable career path.
- Augery (reading the livers of animals) and portents (birds flying to the right or left) are still seen as valid ways making important decisions.
- Political leaders are valued for their bravery in battle, leading from the front, risking their own lives and leading by example.
And there is even new evidence, deciphered form Liner-A tablets, that they were deeply concerned about issues of climate change, social justice and COIVD-19 vaccines. It seems that the oracle at Delphi read a Facebook post and clued them in that the people of the early 21st century (21st century from what?) would be rightly obsessed with these issues and that these people and their views would be the pinnacle of moral development for all of human history, and that the opinions and concerns of twitter mobs in that era were fixed, immutable and correct for all time.
In fact, the Trojan war was launched because the Trojans were on the wrong side of history on all these issues. So Agamemnon and the boys showed up and did the right thing. They administered social justice and burned it all down. For millennia we’ve referred to “The face [Helen] that launched 1000 ships”, but that was due to an incorrect textual variant in the source documents. It was a “faceBOOK” post that launched 1000 ships. Unfortunately, this lead directly to Aeneas founding Rome. They were also on the wrong side of history. What can you do?
There are some themes that Homer dealt with at length. Things change. These are no longer issues for humanity:
- Wrath
- Jealousy
- Hatred
- War
- Death
- Greed
- Pride
- Fate
- Joy
- Sorrow
- Glory
- Destiny
- Companionship
- Loyalty
- Retribution
- Pathos
- Grief
- Treachery
- Mortality
It’s a good thing nobody has to read Homer any more. Or Dr Seuss. That stuff is problematic, and longer that 140 characters!
#7 of #100DaysToOffload take 2, https://100daystooffload.com/